Experience Update - Difficulties, Custom Mode, Sleeping Rework.

Hi Survivors!

We are almost there; the third and last part of the game will soon release. While the content of Arid was planned and part of our learning experience as a student project, all the features and changes that happened within the regular updates are a result of the community. It has been a great experience to learn and improve Arid along with the players, and today's update is all thanks to your feedback!

Difficulties

Some like it long, some like it short. Some more like it hard, others prefer it smooth. Not sure what you are thinking about, but we are talking about our difficulty settings! We have just added 5 different difficulties for the game, including a custom mode!

We are currently happy with the balance we have achieved during Early Access, but your feedback clearly showed different expectations and tastes about the preferred length of the day, or the amount of grinding required to survive. So, what's better than letting YOU choose?
In the custom mode it will be possible to individually choose the difficulty for each attributes, sun exposure and length of the day/night.
Want to desperately search for oil in a night only experience? Set the day length to "Minimal" and the night length to "Realistic"! Want to transform shades in small islands of salvation? Try out Sun is Lava settings, where shade is a necessity to survive. Do you just want to explore? Enjoy the tourist mode, with very lenient survival requirements (without missing out on features). You hate tasks and tutorials? Hide them!

As students, we will not be able to always expand this version of Arid, so we want you to tune it to your own tastes as much as possible!

Sleeping Rework

Sleeping has been often a cause of discussion between the players, due to the lack of control and an unclear interface. Hopefully, that should happen no more! With the new sleeping rework, players will be able to wake up exactly when they need, at the hours they want (it will still not be possible to sleep when having full energy).
Have you also played the game for 30 minutes just to die and discover you did not save? Beside sporadic checkpoints and the manual save, you can now save automatically when sleeping!

Torch

This is just a small change, but worth mentioning. By pressing the left click while holding the torch, you can now increase the range of the visibility.

Quality of Life Changes

You will find more in the changelog, but we wanted to specify that we addressed an important point brought up by the players:
- When a tool breaks, a notification will appear. We will keep improving on this with the next patches.

Patch Notes

Gameplay

CHANGES

Sleeping

• Player can choose if saving when waking up.
• Sleeping now shows the correct time of the day.
• Players can wake up at any minute.

Sandstorm

• Changed duration from 2 minutes to 3 minutes.

General

• Added multiple difficulty settings.
• Added an option to turn off tutorials and objectives.
• Added more beds and water storages in the mining town.
• Dropped item lifespan changed from 1 minute to 5 minutes.
• Improved run and jump animations.
• Changed visuals of torch fire.
• Changed visuals of tutorial UI.
• Reduced amount of pickaxes available in Mining Town.
• Sunburn now goes down when sleeping.
• Added dust clouds in all maps.
• Added circling birds to all maps.
• Added a notification for when a tool breaks.
• Added panorama shots for the loading screen.
• Added ability to put the torch up to emit more light. (default button left mouse button)
• Amount of ropes required to craft the Improved hammer reduced from 4 to 1.
• All mummies are now interactable.
• Added ‘hypothermia’ effect that triggers during the night in the ‘infinite desert’. This fixes the immersion issues with the players going out of boundaries at night.
• Infinite desert does not give heatstroke during the night.

FIXES

• FIXED - Campfire causing performance issues.
• FIXED - General spelling improvements.
• FIXED - Crafting table not properly showing the bonus results when using tools.
• FIXED - Intro subtitles keep playing after skipping intro.
• FIXED - Exhausted icon not properly showing.
• FIXED - Player occasionally getting stuck in landscape caused by dismounting a rope.
• FIXED - Overlapping icons showing in credits menu.
• FIXED - Text on door always saying ‘Open’ instead of ‘Interact’.
• FIXED - Various collision issues in Mining Town.
• FIXED - Rare crash caused by saving / loading.
• FIXED - Sandstorm not appearing anymore after day 60.

AUDIO

FIXES

• FIXED - Heartbeat sound playing in menu.
• FIXED - Volume being too loud for certain player actions.

USER EXPERIENCE

CHANGES

• Revamped Sleep UI.
• Updated tutorial UI screens with new theme visuals.
• Added a notification for when a tool breaks.
• Changed loading screen to feature panoramic shots.
• Updated visuals of options menu.

FIXES

• FIXED - improved hammer not showing up in the disassembly UI.